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Because I’m An Impulsive Idiot: Four Different Packs Of 2018 Football Cards

Long story short: I’m in a local Dollar Tree store just about once a week, and have had fun buying the repacks they have there. The enjoyable Prestine baseball repacks haven’t been seen in months in my neck of the woods, but I still enjoy the CardsOne Multi-Sport repacks (which had probably been sitting there for a couple of years until I came along).

Last week I cleaned out the last of their repacks.

This week I found the same empty gravity feeders I’d left behind… but I already had a $5 bill in my hand, so I settled for two 2018 football packs as a consolation prize. I’ll be frank, the cards stunned me… and in a good way.

Especially the 2018 Panini Football pack. The first card I pulled out of the pack was this card of the Dallas Cowboys’ Zack Martin
I think it looks a bit better in-hand than in this scan, but the photo shows up really well and I like the very minimalist design: It’ gives you the basic information and then gets the hell out of the way. My one complaint is that the team name is very small and hard to read (but that’s OK because the back has a big honkin’ team logo on it).

For those people who like the O-Pee-Chee-esque “Traded” text lines on their cards, Panini does that in this set.
It’s hard to see in this scan, but above the “P” Panini logo is a little text line which reads “SIGNED BY BILLS ON 3/15/18”.

I had a less positive reaction to the second pack… at first, anyway. My initial reaction to 2018 Prestige was that it was a typical Panini design with way too much going on, but the more I look at these, the more I like them.
It’s not a bad design, it’s just not *my* type of design. I don’t think I would buy more of these, not even from the dollar store, but I also won’t trash it. FYI, the text and logos on the card front are done in silver foil.

I will say one nice thing about 2018 Prestige…

These cards have the nicest backs I’ve seen on a Panini card (which isn’t a huge competition, I’ll admit)
It’s got sort of a 2013 Pinnacle thing going for it (that’s good in my book, I like 2013 Pinnacle enough to wish it were licensed).

Before I get off of the Dollar Tree packs, I want to point out that these packs are a dollar each because they are strictly base cards, not an insert to be found. I personally don’t have a problem with that, but I thought I should mention it.

Oh, and I should also mention that Panini has an exclusive license with the NFL, so all of these packs are made by Panini America.

I was so surprised by these two Panini packs that later that night, when I was in Target, I bought a couple of other packs (which were a bit more expensive than a buck each).

One of the packs was for 2018 Classics football, which I’d been seeking out ever since I received a Classics Franco Harris card from CommishBob over at The Five Tool Collector.

I was hoping to pull more cards for my team, the Steelers… but I did pull a very cool card of Dick LeBeau, who used to be the Steelers’ defensive coordinator.
I like these cards because they’re appealingly retro without going overboard. As I’ve mentioned before, Panini has a track record of going too far with their design elements, but they were nice and retrained on these.

The backs of the Classics cards are also pretty good in a throwback-y way
The one thing which threw me off with the backs was what I thought was a cartoon in the lower left. This one shows a unicycle and says “Dick’s secret skills include playing guitar and writing songs”. Another one showed a pizza and said something about the player liking shrimp. What the WHAT? Turns out that they’re not so much cartoons as much as icons representing categories. Once I realized what they were doing I came down from Red Alert and went back to enjoying the cards.

The last pack I bought, 2018 Donruss Football, was sort of an “in for a penny, in for a pound” purchase… I just wanted to see if a Donruss design was better when it’s licensed.

The answer is yes… but not much. The Donruss logo and player name up top is in silver foil, which is hard to read against a dark background (which is why I scanned a light-background card).

I liked this card of the Patriots’ first round pick Sony Michel… more for the photo than anything else.
Looks like Michel is going to make his NFL debut this Sunday.

So that’s the four packs. I may buy more of the 2018 Panini Football from Dollar Tree, and I’m definitely working on wantlists for that set and 2018 Classics… All in all I was fairly well pleased with these packs.